How I Got 14,068 Backlinks: 9 Proven Link Building Strategies

- Nathan Gotch, the founder of Rankability and Gotch SEO Academy, teaches nine proven link building strategies. Number one, identify an expert and create linkable content. - The link building strategy number three is to leverage the relevancy pyramid. In short, prioritize the most relevant link opportunities first and then work your way down as you tap out each category. - Speaker A tells people to get more reviews, expand the audience, and make marketing a priority to build authoritativeness. Backlinks are the core determining factor, but it's important to grow the link, profile, reviews, and the audience simultaneously.

Using the nine proven link building strategies you're about to learn, we grew this business's organic search traffic by 300%. I'm Nathan Gotch, the founder of rankability and Gotch SEO Academy, and since 2013, I've led hundreds of successful SEO and link building campaigns. And watch until the end of this video because I shared two bonus techniques that force Google to trust your backlinks. So these actions aim to increase your website's authoritativeness, with content being the lead domino. So just go in this order. Number one, identify your expert. You need someone with subject matter expertise to act as the face of your business. But simply being an expert isn't enough. Whoever you pick also needs to be willing to market themselves. And you must be willing to transform from just an expert to an authority. And there is a difference. An expert equals someone better than the general public at a particular skill. An authority is an expert who has influence. So think about it. Who can become this person in your company? It's critical to consider because a strong personal brand can be a huge backlink driver. For example, Gary Vaynerchuk has over 16,000 referring domains to his personal website. And just to top it off, Vaynerchuk's marketing agency has over 2600 referring domains. The point is, building a personal brand around a subject matter expert is the most powerful weapon you have in your link building arsenal. Number two, create linkable content. Now, there are specific content angles that are proven to attract backlinks. But here's an important point. You must find angles that worked in other industries and verify that the angle hasn't been used in your specific industry. In other words, you want to use fresh and unique angles for Linkbait. Now you can certainly identify assets that worked for your competitors, build a similar asset, and score a few backlinks. But it's nothing compared to finding an untapped angle because you'll score 100% of the backlinks and all the eyeballs. You can think of this as the blue ocean strategy for linkbait. So the core part of this process is simple. Get linkbait inspiration from different industries. And here are some examples. Angle number one is custom, so investing in design is a powerful way to differentiate. Angle number two are guides, epic guides. Leverage. Length implies strength. Angle number three is data. Angle number four is helpful. So free tools, software, et cetera, are perfect for promotion and link acquisition. And it's never been easier to create create these assets because of chat GPT. For example, I created this script timer in only 1 hour with chat GPT. Angle number five is weird content. Angle number six are rankings. Angle number seven is deep content. So deep technical pieces serve incredibly well as linkbait. All right, now moving on to link building strategy number three, which is leverage the relevancy pyramid. So the relevancy pyramid is a safeguard against lousy link building decisions. Here's the deal. Most link builders are obsessed with metrics like Daevdeh doctor or organic traffic for prioritizing link opportunities. And while these do matter, they're secondary to relevance. Relevance is king when it comes to link building. And Google's John Mueller says that the total number of backlinks a website has doesn't matter at all to the search algorithm. One good link from a relevant website can be more impactful than millions of low quality links. And that's why I created the relevancy pyramid. In short, prioritize the most relevant link opportunities first. And these are at the top of the pyramid. And in most cases you won't have many 100% matches from which to get links, but it's where you should start. And then once you've tapped it out, just move down the pyramid, which increases the total number of opportunities. So let's say I wanted to find link prospects for a beef jerky company. I'd go into the Ahrefs keyword Explorer, enter the broad topic and then go to traffic share section and click on buy domains. And within seconds you should see what types of websites rank for this topic. Next, you'll need to investigate these websites to find additional topics. For example, you can do a site colon search to see what topics they write about. I also recommend looking at Reddit. To get more broad topics just search Reddit.com plus your topic and then within seconds I found multiple subreddits like jerky, keto, cooking, hiking, food and meat. And they're all talking about beef jerky. So now use chat GBT to prioritize these topics based on relevance. Here's a prompt. Now you'll know what order to find the link prospects. Just start with beef jerky blogs and work your way down as you tap out each category. And now link building strategy number four is to use the merger technique. So if you're feeling like Warren Buffet today, you're going to love this technique. So the merger technique finds websites with high quality relevant link profiles and 301 redirects them to your website. And the merger allows you to get high quality backlinks overnight. And actually wrote about this technique in 2015 and still use it today because it works when you do it right. So here's how to do it. First, look for opportunities. So the merger technique works best when you acquire an existing website. So I'd start by looking for undervalued assets within your industry. Prioritize blogs with great link profiles that have grown stagnant regarding new content and updates. Treat these domains as if you're acquiring them as real businesses and that's why you need to examine the link profile. An ideal link profile will have many editorial backlinks from relevant websites. You can use Semrush's authority score to see the quality and relevance of the link profile. You'll also want to examine the anchor text profile, just make sure it isn't spammed to death and then you'll want to estimate the backlink value. So export all the backlinks and assign a value based on the strain. You can just go into a service like Loganix to get a ballpark idea of backlink costs and then just add up all the values and you'll get a link profile value. So now that you know what the domain is worth, you know how much you can invest and then once you've acquired a good domain, it's time to 301 redirect it. And unfortunately this is where most people mess up. You must 301 redirect based on link distribution. For example, if most of the backlinks hit the homepage, create a dedicated page to inherit those links is ideal. If the backlinks hit many different pages, you'll need to find relevant pages on your website to inherit those backlinks. And then you can add internal links to this page to drive link equity from the redirect. And finally, just be patient. Do not rush into this strategy and just wait for the right opportunities and then go super hard when you see them. Number five, steal your competitors backlinks. So just go into Semrush's backlink app tool and enter your top organic competitors. Now you'll see all the domains linking to your competitors but not linking to you. Now its your job to narrow this gap. Number six the similar content strategy. So this method only works if you have a unique angle for a keyword. Dont expect to get a link from regurgitated content. For example lets say I wanted to get more backlinks for best cms for SEO Id send the following outreach email to every page that writes about this topic. Number seven resource pages so the best way to get links from resource pages is to have something of exceptional value. So use these search strings to find opportunities. Then once you've found some awesome opportunities. Try this outreach template. And now number eight, use digital pr. So if you want high quality backlinks without creating assets, consider using search intelligence. They use a unique strategy that doesn't require creating assets. Instead, you can contribute expert insights to other websites and they pitch a huge list of journalists and you can score powerful backlinks directly to your homepage. But please don't underestimate the power of homepage backlinks. If you study the link profiles the most successful websites online, you see that most of their backlinks point to their homepages. So as long as your website is structured well, the backlink equity and trust will flow to other pages. So I'll have a link below this video where you can learn more about search intelligence. Link building strategy number nine is to leverage existing backlink authority. So backlinks move the ship, but internal links take your results to the next level. So go to Semrush's backlink analytics tool and click on indexed pages. Then you'll see the most powerful pages on your website from back link perspective. Then just look for opportunities to add internal links on these pages in a natural way. All right, so now moving on to the two bonuses. Let's start with bonus number one, which is get more reviews. So reviews are an external signal that can be used to determine a brand's or website's authoritativeness. Google mentions reviews throughout the quality rater guidelines, especially in this section. As mentioned before, backlinks are the core determining factor, but your goal should be to build as much trust for your website and your brand as possible. So if you have a ton of backlinks but no reviews and no audience, something looks super sketchy. And that means you need to work to grow your link, profile, your reviews and your audience simultaneously. And now bonus number two is expand your audience. So audience size won't directly impact authoritativeness in the context of Google SEO, however, it can indirectly impact your authoritativeness. For example, when you have an engaged audience, you have a marketing channel for your content and this can give you you instant eyeballs every time you publish. And that's why you should have an email newsletter. The more people see your content, the more likely you'll be able to score some backlinks. Plus, creating content on other platforms can attract branded searches. According to a study by Moz, there's a correlation between brand authority and backlinks regarding SEO performance, and that means that websites with backlinks and brand authority can survive Google algorithm updates. While the opposite is true, a lack of branded searches may signal to Google that your site isn't trustworthy. And now bonus number three is it's a marathon, not a sprint. You don't build authoritativeness overnight, do great work, and make marketing a priority. It'll take time, but it's definitely worth it. And to put in perspective, Gotch SEO.com is over ten years old and has a doctor of 73, so just stay the course. And if you want access to all of my link building systems, consider applying for Gotch SEO Academy. And while backlinks are one of the most important Google ranking factors, you should also check out my new SEO checklist to make sure you've covered a all of the SEO variables that are going to affect your performance.